


we'll find a place where there's room to grow (and yes, we've just begun)

by Duck_Life



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Conversations, Doubt, Gen, Paranoia, Team as Family, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23063068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Dani and Sam have some concerns about the method by which Melody got her powers back.
Relationships: Sam Guthrie & Danielle Moonstar
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	we'll find a place where there's room to grow (and yes, we've just begun)

Dani finds Sam leaning against a tree, staring down the rocky cliffside at the waves crashing below. As she approaches, she notices him hurriedly wipe his eyes before turning to look at her. Dani comes to stand beside him, their backs to the rest of Krakoa. 

“Welcome to paradise,” Dani says flatly. Down below, sea foam collects on the beach. Sam’s jaw works. 

“You can’t be okay with this,” he says. 

“Of course I’m not. Why do you think I was so keen on getting you and bringing you here?” 

“Thought that was Bobby’s idea.”

“Well.” Dani sighs. “It was. But I agreed with it. Hard.” 

“Because?” 

She looks over her shoulder, as though even now they are being watched. Even now they are being surveyed, interpreted, edited. “I needed to know I wasn’t the only one. The only one who wasn’t… buying all this.” 

“You mean everyone else… ?”

“Bobby was dead. Rahne was dead,” Dani says. “Paige, too. They all got brought back. And… and who the hell knows what happens inside those resurrection pods, huh? What comes back the same? What comes back different? What ideas get… planted?” She shudders, wrapping her arms around herself even though the weather is warm and balmy. “Everyone keeps calling it paradise but it feels like one big trap. And I don’t know who I can trust, who I can talk to. Shan, maybe. Tabs, maybe. You? Definitely.” 

“Good to know,” Sam mumbles, his face white. “I just… I mean, if Mel chose this…” 

“Does that make it okay for you?” Dani says, thinking of the blood running down Melody Guthrie’s face, thinking of the fluid from the resurrection pod dripping off her as she rose into the air. “It seems to make it okay for everybody else. Does it make it okay for you?”

Sam draws a shuddering breath and shakes his head. “I just don’t… I mean, we’ve got reality warpers. Proteus. Why not just give them back their powers? Why… why does it have to be…?”

“Ritualistic execution,” Dani says. “I don’t know. I don’t know that we can trust it. I don’t know that I’ve trusted a damn thing since Charles Xavier showed up again.” She draws air through her teeth. “It’s just… God, Sam, you were off-planet. You didn’t see how fucked we were. Mutants weren’t just in trouble, we were… we were  _ done _ . Scott was grasping at straws, tried to make all the humans forget mutants existed. It was insane.” 

“Mutants were suffering,” Sam sighs. “And here comes Charles with a whole new dream. A community. And everybody needed it so bad we didn’t step back to think about the consequences. And now…” He gazes out at the horizon. “And now I know exactly how it sounds to hear my little sister get beaten to death.” His face looks paper-white. “What, um.” He shuts his eyes for a moment, like he can shut out the world. “What’s the move now, Chief?” 

Dani shakes her head. “I think… I think all we can do is wait,” she says, sounding almost hoarse. Had she been calling out as Melody died? Sam can’t remember, couldn’t hear anything over his own yelling and Mel’s death rattle. “Wait and see. Melody’s okay right now, so.”

“Yeah. Right now.” He’s thinking about Lewis and Jeb, and trying hard  _ not _ to think about them. 

Not when there are telepaths around every corner, not when Xavier himself is standing at the head of a brand-new nation. 

“I’ll be on Chandrilar,” he says. “And you’ll be…”

“I’ll be here,” she promises. “And if anything… happens… I’ll tell you. I’ll come tell you and Bobby, I’ll come and get you right away.”

“Uh-huh.” He rubs his jaw. He needs a shave. “You really think… when people get resurrected, their minds get messed with?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Dani admits. “Josh is… he doesn’t talk to me about it. He doesn’t talk to me about much of anything anymore. The Five are his family now.”

“We were like that,” he reminds her. “ _ Are  _ like that.”

“I know,” she says. “... But I still called my folks every once in a while.” 

“Right.” 

“Anyway, the point is,” she says, shaking her head again like she can shake away the sting, “I don’t  _ know _ if the resurrection process alters your mind. But not knowing makes me nervous. So…”

“So try not to die,” Sam says. 

“Always do,” she says. “And don’t forget— I can sense death coming.” (She had watched Melody’s Death vision hover above her like a flashing neon sign for the entire time she was in the Crucible.) 

Sam hugs her then, the kind of protective farmboy big-brother hug none of them could get enough of back in the good old days. She wraps her arms around him and tucks her chin over his shoulder, breathing in the floral scent of Krakoa and the salt-spray of the ocean. 


End file.
